Rob Ford is dead, and it wasn’t his fault. This is an unexpected epitaph, I know, but Ford was nothing if not unpredictable.
Until his cancer diagnosis derailed his 2014 re-election bid for mayor, it seemed entirely likely that his grave personal problems with substance abuse would spell his end.
But it was a disease, not a crack pipe, that finally took him down.
I’ve been struggling with how to frame this piece ever since the news started trickling out that Ford wasn’t coming out of the hospital this time. I’m torn between the impulse to massage the memory of the man into something soothing and palatable, and the impulse to tell the truth: that Ford could be a terrible, terrible person.
He was a husband and a father, yes. And when it suited him, he used wife Renata and the kids as props to position himself as the victim of a hostile media. But the media wasn’t the cause of his misery. He was.
He didn’t understand politics as most people define them but convinced his supporters that he was a working-class guy just like them and got them to believe he was the only person fighting for them. Never mind that he was unprepared for the job he won in a perfect storm rules were for other people.
And can you blame him? Ford was never held accountable for anything, thanks to a coterie of enablers.
His brother Doug waged an almost non-stop war against the awful, biased reporters who kept telling people about the things Rob insisted on doing and saying, but even Doug was unable to stop his brother from finally admitting he’d smoked crack. The way he came clean was a signature Rob Ford move. It came out of nowhere.
That’s how it works when you think you’re invulnerable – or, more likely, you simply don’t care what happens. Rob did whatever he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it, and it was left to everyone else to rationalize, excuse or ignore it as they saw fit. Most of the time, Team Ford found a way to do just that.
Hell, even Doug seemed indifferent to his little brother’s suffering when it furthered his own political ambitions.
But that’s all over now.
And while his supporters are already crafting comforting fictions about a brave man who just wanted to fight for the little guy, his actual legacy is more complicated.
In many ways, Toronto is still recovering from his four years at the helm. Donald Trump’s terrifying presidential campaign stateside is Rob’s mayoral run writ large. Rob and Doug in turn lifted most of their election tactics from the playbook Karl Rove wrote for George W. Bush in 2000.
My heart bleeds for the child Rob Ford was – the misfit kid who just wanted to play football and do politics like his dad.
Instead, he waded into public life utterly unequipped.
He loved retail politics and often boasted he always returned people’s phone calls. People wrote songs about him. He went on Jimmy Kimmel.
I suspect that for a lot of his life, he felt under attack for what seemed to be no reason at all. And when that happens to you, you lash out however you can. It’s not your fault you’re being attacked. You were just minding your own business. Why can’t people leave you alone?
Now he’s gone, denied the redemption arc.
Doug, ever committed to his own version of reality, will no doubt eulogize his brother and maybe use his memory to fuel another run at politics, because that’s what awful people do when they crave power and legitimacy.
That’s the world Rob Ford came from. He never had a chance.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
